Recently I was in the hospital for a few days (I’m doing fine now, thank you), and I couldn’t help but notice that my roommate’s television was on more than 18 hours a day. All day. Every day. It was an inescapable reminder that we live and minister in an entertainment-saturated world.
Sometimes the most obvious realities are overlooked or taken for granted. But if Max DePree is right and “The first task of a leader is to define reality,” then it’s important for leaders to address even the obvious realities. One such reality is this: it’s an unusual person today who doesn’t spend at least four hours a day absorbing TV, radio, iTunes, YouTube, Facebook, sports, movies, video games, or some other form of entertainment. For many, like my hospital roommate, it’s a lot more than four hours a day.
What does this constant exposure to entertainment do to a person? How does it influence the way people think? The way they pray? The way they worship? And most important for those of us in ministry, how does it affect the way we encourage people to follow Christ?
When entertainment is perhaps the most prevalent form of communication, what does that mean for preachers, disciplers, worship leaders, and others in positions of Christian influence? Do we become entertainers ourselves? Do we refuse to become entertainers? Or do we land somewhere in between?
My friend Chuck Fromm, editor of Worship Leader magazine (and former president of Maranatha! Music), recently stirred my thinking on this in an email exchange. He pointed out that from the beginning of time, there have been controversies over media (the plural form of “medium”) in worship.
Cain fought Abel over what was an acceptable medium of worship.
God met Moses through the medium of a burning bush. And later Moses brought his people to that mountain, and while he was away receiving God’s Word on the medium of stone, the people were worshiping pagan style in a wild orgy. It’s not surprising that the first four of the Ten Commandments, set into stone by God, are rules of engagement for true worship.
Still later, we see Moses fashioning another medium to point people to God: a snake on a pole. Centuries later, when that once-effective medium went awry, Hezekiah removed these symbols in a burst of worship reform.
“Then, of course,” Chuck wrote, “in an act of media fulfillment, God brought about a new medium for his message, but this time the medium was perfect. In fact the medium was the message, the person of Jesus Christ.”
I appreciate Chuck’s clear-sighted perspective. In a world of ever-changing but soon obsolete media (anybody want my VHS tapes?), we point to the never-changing but always current mediator: Jesus Christ.
As human beings, we will always have to “mediate” our message with some form of communication: writing, speaking, signing, music, video … how else will it ever be communicated? But we are always aware that our medium isn’t the message. Jesus is.
When entertainment is the air everyone breathes, it’s natural for people to respond to whatever worship media we use with either “I like that” or “I don’t like that”—even when liking it or not isn’t the point. That’s how you’re conditioned to respond in an entertainment-based culture.
This issue of Leadership Journal will help you guide people who have breathed that air for as long as they can remember.
Marshall Shelley, Leadership Journal editor in chief.
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